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But I wanted a signed copy

Oops…

In our family the news is out. My two lovely Aunts have heard from my mother that I have a book contract in the wings and one Aunt said to mum… “I want a copy of Lily’s book and I want it personally signed…”

My mother dutifully passed on this message yesterday and the conversation went like this:

“That’s great, Mum. But it’s going to be an e-book.”

Cue silent pause, which I fill. “It’s an electronic book, Mum. You need a thing called a Kindle to read it.”

“Oh. It’s not a book then?”

“It’s a book. It’s just not printed out.”

“Oh,” more pause. “How much does a Kindle thing cost?” Her voice goes a little squeaky at the end.

“You can get all types, mum, with a zillion bells and whistles, but the one I want for Christmas is about $120.”

“Oh.” Brightens. “It’s not thousands then.”

“No. Not thousands, mum.”

But I can’t imagine either of my Aunts rushing out to buy a Kindle. And my mother has yet to master the sending of a text. She is certain if she touches a computer she will break it, and the idea of using a mouse makes her look for the highest place to leap.

Make no mistake. My mother is still thrilled, but I don’t think the idea of there being an electronic book ever occurred to her, much less that her daughter might write one.

Yep. I gave my mum a ‘go’ on our computer once. She had absolutely no idea how the mouse worked. No concept of following a cursor around on screen. My son who’s five has more natural sense of how it works and now I can’t stop him. He loves the computer, luckily at the moment his thing is spelling out words (not Angry Birds or something like that). By the way Jen – I’m very impressed at you up and commenting at 6.57am!!